Distrust of government is a natural response to a controlling and out-of-control bureaucracy. The motivation for protest and reform is not animosity towards government and its legitimate functions, but a love of America and a passionate desire to pass on to the next generation the innumerable blessings of liberty. Citizens are frightened by the government's relentless growth, unsustainable debt trajectory, culture of corruption, and encroachment of individual rights.... Critics of the tea party movement attempt to derail it with meritless claims of racism, extremism, bigotry, conspiracy, class-warfare and malice. The claims are ridiculous. Tea party participants include members of every party, social class, ethnicity, age and gender; they hold varying views on a number of issues, but share a deep appreciation for the limited, constitutional government established by America's founders. They see Washington's profligate spending, imperious unaccountability, and reprobate political environment as symptoms of a federal government that recognizes no limitations on its power. They feel a civic responsibility to speak out and to work toward a return to constitutional governance and sound fiscal policy. This is not a book about the tea party movement. It is a book about the political, economic and cultural upheavals fueling the movement: the insanely escalating national debt; the increasingly coercive and contemptuous political establishment; the arrogant failure of true political leadership; and the pervasive assault on the society-sustaining virtues of truth, trust, integrity, morality, freedom, and civility . . . .